


Second Verse, Same as the First

by Phritzie



Series: Drinking Buddies [2]
Category: Runescape
Genre: Alcohol, Bathing/Washing, Convenient Plot Twists, F/M, Intimidation, Miscommunication, Other, Sexual Content, Some Irreverence to Churches?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 06:42:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13541868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phritzie/pseuds/Phritzie
Summary: Not too long ago, she thought the world became simpler the more you found out about it. Turns out nothing really works like that. Especially when what one's being taught is a lie.





	Second Verse, Same as the First

**Author's Note:**

> Please mind the rating, be 18+ and so forth.

A sound like the hammering of a gavel stopped them both cold. Felix shot him a quizzical look as he closed his eyes and hummed irritably, stroking a thumb over her cheek in contemplation.

It took until the third knock for Sliske to drag himself away, kissing her stomach fiercely before extracting himself from her arms with an unusually pained expression. Sitting up to watch him, Felix observed as he held a finger to his lips and then trudged down the stairs to answer the insistent pounding on the door, figure wavering and pulsing dizzily as he took on the same disguise from last night.

“Good morning,” he called brightly from somewhere below. “Just a moment, if you please!”

His voice shifting octaves like that disturbed her a little. She couldn’t quite make out the words of his visitor, but it did occur to her that she should hope for their safety.

Felix flexed into a pleasant arch, groaning as the muscles in her back and arms bunched. _I’m in for a very interesting visit to the Apothecary_ , she thought, _if this is the new normal_.

As she rolled the abused tissue in her neck with a hand she noticed her pack leaning innocently against the dresser. It hadn’t been with her at the Flying Horse. Felix very clearly remembered stringing it up a tree with cord in the same clearing she had last camped in.

Concerned, Felix pulled down her shirt and walked over to rummage through the contents of her precious adventuring gear. Her rations, journal, bedroll, rune pouch and waterskin were all there. She patted the front searchingly and decided that the various navigational accoutrements she kept around weren’t missing either.

She held still and strained to listen to the conversation in development. Frown growing, a few moments determined that by what she could make out, it was time to make her way down there before Sliske did something true to character.

Pulling on her trousers one leg at a time and stepping in to her old boots, Felix collected her bag and tramped downstairs, arriving just in time for Sliske to slam his front door in the face of a highly indignant Councilor Halgrive.

She blinked hard. “What the hell did you just do that for?” He rolled his eyes mockingly and fell against the entrance with a huff. “Halgrive is a good man!”

Sliske laughed in disbelief. “And? Somebody filed a noise complaint early this morning and I just let him know that if the last five hadn’t bothered me, then it clearly wasn’t that noisy."

That bomb deployed, he pasted on a sly smile and strode into the kitchen. He peered into a cupboard fixed overhead what looked to be a wood burning stove. Reaching a long-fingered hand inside he pulled out a tin and rattled it curiously. “Tea?”

Felix reddened a little. For several reasons. “How did you get—”

“I retrieved it this morning. Have you smelled the rain?” Sliske nonchalantly shook the entire contents of the container into a heavy bottomed pot and began filling it with water from a hand-pump affixed to the sink. “You have an awful lot of paper in there. It would be a shame for it to be ruined like that.”

She snapped at him in embarrassment, thinking of her journal. “Don’t go through my things!”

 _Gods, I wrote about the dream I had with him in there. He would be delighted._ She imagined he probably hadn’t found it – _yet_ , a voice whispered urgently – because Felix would be surprised if he could restrain himself from mocking her for keeping such a tasty secret.

“Oh? Fine. But I thought you might appreciate it.” The way his hands were fiddling with the heat trap on the stove was frustrating her and she reached over, flipping the lid closed. “Thank you, Felix,” he purred, grinning down at her. She retreated before anything could come of the promising glow in his eyes.

“You don’t actually spend much time here... otherwise, do you?” She regarded the bare furnishings again from a less inebriated perspective. The books on the shelves didn't seem to have any common theme, and the fireplace was clean, not a fleck of ash in sight.

“Why bother?” Sliske tutted as he bent down to examine the place where the wood should go. “The committee is too stuffy, and my neighbors have no appreciation for art.”

 _Is that what they’re calling it nowadays?_ Felix cleared her throat as he straightened up. “Listen, forget the tea,” she said nervously, kicking a scuff in the carpet. “I’ve got to go.”

He turned sharply and smiled in a way that looked a little too controlled to be genuine. “Yes—off with you then.” He flicked a wrist at her dismissively before pouring the grainy liquid in the kettle down the floor drain.

She winced. _Yikes._ Hefting her bag, not wanting to dither indecisively about whether to formally excuse herself, she fled through the door and out onto the street, ignoring his vile laughter. Feeling very much like she had escaped a room without air, Felix only stopped to breathe and think about where she was going when her feet met the damp boards of the dock.

The fog was already rolling in and very few people were actually out and about. _Looks like Captain Barnaby isn’t even here yet._ She groaned. Normally she would just knock back a drink or two in The Poison Arrow while she waited for him to arrive.

But thoughts whirling and still moved by recollections of this morning’s mystifying, near domestic tone of intimacy, Felix felt as though she should smother those behaviors for now. Who knew what strange powers had joined forces to summon Sliske whenever she drank? And with such disarming frequency? Perhaps he was stalking her.

 _It could be hours before Barnaby decides to show up, the old codger_.

Felix collected herself with a revitalizing draw of seaside wind, and started for the north.

_Looks like I’m walking to Catherby._

 

* * *

 

 

 One year ago.

Everything about Varrock set Felix’s teeth on edge.

The worsening economic situation was deeply impacting the size of the beggar class. The aloof and self-righteous soldiers of the king hardly spared their own citizens a look, and even sweet, misguided Gertrude, the cat breeder living on the outskirts of the city, refused to understand how her actions were slowly affecting the local bird population. Nothing but necessity kept her there.

Morytania, arguably, was far more inhospitable. Its noxious swamps and discolored skies sucked the energy out of her steps, and the looming threat of vampyre domination hung over its people like a scythe. But sometimes, she could swear that in its honesty, it almost seemed better in comparison.

She worried the ring on her finger and stepped into The Hair of the Dog.

There was always a split second of hostility in their eyes as the werewolves noticed her enter, standing there hesitantly in the threshold backed by the eternal gloom that pervaded Canifis. Then they were fine, charmed away by a magic she didn’t fully comprehend.

Felix blew a sigh of relief.

It ruffled the limp tendrils of hair hanging in her face. Her frizzing, oily curls had been consigned to a high bun that was now coming apart, but it would hold until she could find enough time to take a bath.

Finding a spot by someone who could have easily passed for a human were it not for the obscene digital hair and red eyes, Felix fortified her nerves and called the bartender.

Roavar came ready for trouble. “Felix,” he rumbled. “Didn't I _just_ tell you not to show your face here unless you had a good reason?”

She laughed. “Oh, haven’t you heard?” She produced a small pouch, contents clinking pleasantly. “That foul-smelling Doctor Fenkenstrain, the one who reanimated late Lord Rologarth? He’s gone, and I’m to blame.”

His caustic look melted into jealous amazement. “Did you eat him?” Roavar demanded impatiently, invading her space. He sniffed neatly about her mouth and nose.

Felix coughed reflexively at the thought, shaking her head and trying as politely as possible to push him away. “Ah, no, the smell of formaldehyde and arrogance was simply far too off-putting,” she lied, and hoped the frantic twisting of her ring wasn’t apparent to him.

“That’s unfortunate.” He scratched his mustached face. “I understand. Cubs have weak stomachs.” Roavar extended a claw-tipped hand expectantly and she deposited her coins there, smile hopeful. It was enough to buy several pints of that brain-dissolving werewolf mead the town was famous for, and a bed for the night.

As the werewolf bartender pulled the first sickeningly ashen brew from the tap, he stared at someone entering his tavern. “So,” Roavar said slowly, eyes tracking the newcomer in a smooth line. “What would you like to know, Felix?” From her view, it seemed like he was watching them move from table to table, a path spanning the entirety of the room.

 _Strange._ Perhaps it was Malek… collecting a tithe. Felix had made quite a scene with him the last time she was there. _Fucking vampyres_.

“I’d like to hear what people have been saying about the Drakans,” she inquired seriously. Roaver leveled her a thoughtful look. 

"Well..."

Bartering for information with intoxication was a game well known to all bartenders, and Felix played it expertly, propping up the bar well beyond midnight. Roavar told her plenty, most of it relevant. She vowed that she would make a note of what she remembered before turning in. But the more she heard, particularly about the wicked and sometimes unpredictable actions of Vanescula Drakan, Lowerniel Drakan’s sister, the more conflicted she became.

Under pressure from on high and squeezed ever tighter by cruel taxation, the situation for werewolves and humankind alike in Morytania was more complicated than she'd originally thought. Roavar served her grimly as he spoke, sharing what tidbits of knowledge he had at her gentle prodding. When Felix noticed the late hour, she excused herself.

He stopped her on her way out and produced a key, dropping it in her hand. “First door on the right, cub.”

 _Well. I wanted to know what they thought of the vampyres,_  she mused, _and why the plight of Meiyerditch never seems to be raised in any of the discussions I’ve seen the werewolves take part in..._

She should have guessed the answer would be simple self-preservation. Disgusting as it was, Felix wasn’t that shocked.

As she mounted the stairs to claim her room for the night something tickled at her periphery. She paused, hand hovering over the banister.

Her eyes subtly scanned the werewolf patrons below. Felix froze when a pair of lustrous red eyes belonging to someone seated far across the tavern locked with hers.

He, or she thought perhaps they were a he, shifted forward while she looked over their relaxed, almost lazy posture. The transformed werewolf raised his mead in a mock toast and held it there, watching her coolly. Her drink-addled mind supplied a flurry of questionable ideas to explain the origins of that calculating stare.

Face red with embarrassment, Felix broke the intense and uninvited eye contact and made quickly for her room.

 

* * *

 

When Felix woke the next morning, she swore that there really wasn’t a difference between day and night in Morytania. She peered out the dingy window of the inn's first floor and drew the covers around her chilled shoulders. There were already several people milling around the square, some leaving in groups.

 _Too bad werewolves aren’t famed for their bathing habits,_ she thought dryly, and pushed away the discomfort of dressing in dirty clothes.

A curt knock rang against the door while she was forcing down a breakfast of apple and cheese. “Alarm call,” a gruff voice said, and just as quickly they were gone, heavy footsteps fading. Her lips quirked as Roavar continued down the hall, rousing his guests. _Maybe one day I can tell him the truth._

The tavern was less busy in the morning and she regretted it when she asked why. Nauseous at the very idea of eating anything from the swamp, let alone raw, she ordered the namesake of the establishment to fend off her hangover. _Let them be who they are. I needn’t go that far to blend in here._

Thankfully, no one raised an invitation to her. She drank in relative peace, the occasional scraping of chairs and crackling of the fire piercing the quiet. It was only once her brows stopped pinching together at every new sensation that Felix felt ready to begin the journey back to Varrock. An obligation to the king meant she would need to quickly relay the news of her discovery of not just the tomb of Ivandis Seergaze, but her successful recreation of the Ivandis rod. The implications of its use against the vampyres was too important to delay.

Her traumatic experience on Harmony Island would also make an interesting enough conversation with the Apothecary’s young apprentice Dahlia, Felix was dead certain about that.

But first… Gods. She used what little was left of her senses to smell her tunic and almost gagged. _I really need a bath._  

 

* * *

 

Felix hauled herself over the Salve bridge to little fanfare, mumbling angrily. If she had been dirty before, she was practically filthy now.

"I hate ghouls," she said with feeling as she passed through the barrier of the crypt.

Though Drezel spoke his greetings warmly and expressed relief at her safe return, he too was disturbed by her ripe aroma. “You have acted very bravely,” the monk offered in a charitable tone, the sleeve he held to his nose obscuring a tight frown. “I would be honored if you would bathe in our—the temple’s facilities.”

She sighed and to thank him didn't mention the slip. As much as the deaths of Drezel’s fellowship saddened her, the reminder that she might soon be scrubbing away weeks of dusty grime in a tub that had once been frequented by one of them was, well. Morbid enough to turn her stomach.

Ivan made a great show of not caring about her appearance or odor. He selflessly assisted her in locating the buckets she would need for her bathwater, and even cheerfully demonstrated how to retrieve it from the swiftly rushing river below. She sat on the low stones leading into the depression surrounding the well as he drew it up from the depths hand over hand.

They chatted quietly about the Myreque and what communications they had received from the new base while Felix was away thwarting zombified pirates. Ivan started to get a little _too_ excited at the prospect of so much adventure, spilling the river water once when she described the… interesting surgical resources they had found to reverse the barbarous mutilation of the Harmony Island monks. Pelting her with questions, he seemed to be prepared with rapid fire follow-ups, asking for clarification and frowning in disappointment when she couldn't expand on how she had built a ladder underwater. Unfortunately, some of the only answers she had made little sense.

"So, he had an enormous barrel on?" Ivan wondered, wide-eyed.

"Well, it was more like it was attached, but yes, I suppose he did," she pondered, wincing at the phantom sensation of anchor clobbering. Ivan finally drew enough water. Felix promised that she would finish her story later and excused herself politely to clean up.

“Mind the stairs!” She grunted a reply to his neighborly call, lifting one bucket after the other up to the surface of Paterdomus.

 

* * *

 

“Honey, I’m home.”

The great doors of the temple shut behind her with a dull boom, and Felix did her best to avoid the faces immortalized in semi-translucent glory high overhead as her boots clicked across the floor.

She wasn't particularly religious herself, but. The faint awareness that seven priestly martyrs, one which she had recently discovered the remains of, _and_ his cerulean holiness could be looking down on her ratty state in disdain wasn't pleasant.

 _Don’t judge me_ , she thought _, you probably got ghoul guts all over yourselves at one point too._

Multicolored light from the stained-glass portraiture threw most of the temple awash in glowing beauty, but the rest of it still lay in a depressing state of disrepair. It appeared Drezel had pushed what he could to the sides, clearing narrow pathways to step through the piles of broken glass, upended prayer bells, and smashed wall-fixtures of Saradomin’s star. Felix vowed she would lay some time aside to help the monk fix the place up, on her own power, or by pulling on King Roald's ear if need be. She gingerly picked her way over a row of destroyed pews, minding her load.

On one of the upper floors she walked a narrow cloister to a series of abandoned rooms. It appeared most of them were once sleeping quarters, and out of respect she closed each door.

At the end of a hall she found two adjoining, dome-shaped chambers equipped with the necessities for bathing. Admiring the swirling iconography on the ceiling, she quietly stepped inside, readied her stomach and leveled a gaze at the interior of a tub.

Felix had expected challenges such as months old mossy growth, or perhaps a filthy, hair-clogged drain, but what she did not expect was for there to be a man occupying it.

One of the buckets in her hands clunked as it struck the smooth, marbled floor and she winced when the sound echoed faintly in the open space.

Despite her clumsiness the stranger didn’t budge, and a soft snore issued from his mouth.

 _He’s_ asleep _?_  

_Why is there someone sleeping in the washroom?_

The sunlight pouring in through a window above played over him flatteringly, rich purple painting his mouth and throat. It bled into soft blues and yellows that created blurry motifs on his bare chest before getting lost in a mess of reddish browns on his ratty trousers.

Felix crept closer. She was able to confirm that he was breathing and probably healthy. It was difficult to say with confidence the exact nature of his complexion given the highly variegated lighting, as she discovered when she more carefully examined his hands.

Fingers that could easily span a dinner plate terminated in pointed, sharp nails. She swallowed dryly at the sight. At the opposite end of the tub his bare feet were propped against the lip, and the equally clawed appearance of each toe confirmed it. More shocked than afraid, Felix stared.

 _A werewolf on this side of the river._  She tried to rub her sweating palms against the leathery material covering her thighs, but it only produced streaks of sandy grime and she grimaced in disgust.

It seemed to her the creature must have been tired indeed to pick such a provocative location, though she supposed it wouldn’t be wise for a werewolf to go skulking around Misthalin’s eastern border either. She could imagine the panic that would cause.

He didn’t appear too threatening, slumbering in the bath. In fact, Felix noted he was barely short enough to have squeezed into it in the first place. It was almost comical.

She looked from him, to the door, and then back again.

Were it not for the fact she was certainly risking the beginnings of a bacterial infection and, probably, bogfoot, she wouldn't have entered the adjoining washroom.

As Felix cleansed herself she tried to imagine what could have brought a werewolf across. And how. What little she understood about the priestly consecration of the River Salve was that it served as a boundary line, preventing the passage of all but the most powerful of Zamorak’s followers, and even those individuals were more like legends than contemporary threats.

Perhaps he had found a method of weakening it. The thought of having to purify or strengthen the blessing again so soon frustrated her.

Coming back to herself, Felix noticed that she had scrubbed her skin red in addition to excavating layers of dirt. _That’s going to feel lovely under all my armor_. She set aside the dripping, dirt-tinged rag in her hand and pulled the drainplug, sloshing a little water down the sides to rinse it of the ghastly particles left behind.

 _Thank you, Drezel_. Angry dermis notwithstanding, Felix felt clean for the first time in weeks.

There were maybe only a few more handfuls of water left and with them Felix set about releasing and tidying her neglected hair. But her thoughts lingered on the occupant of the next room, playing over different scenarios of what would happen when her curiosity inevitably led her to wake him. Channeling the diplomacy of Charos worked on the villagers of Canifis, but she doubted a werewolf strong enough to cross the Salve would fall prey to its glamour.

She could just leave, but that meant willfully ignoring the potential threat the werewolf posed toward others.

 _What a plan_ , Felix groused miserably. She found a twig that had potentially spent days hanging out behind her ear and made a face. _But the alternative… if I get Ivan and Drezel up here, what will they do? Won’t they insist on proactive measures?_

Standing in the last of her fresh trousers and a mostly clean undershirt, Felix lingered at the door.

 _I can’t kill a man in his sleep,_ she thought solemnly _._

She looked at her pack, overstuffed with various items, and made a decision about what to do.

The werewolf was right where she had left him. It was just passing midday and the sun was strong through the window, shining directly down in a wide beam. She realized then how tan he was, the whorls of colored light highlighting warm undertones.

“He’s… handsome,” Felix thought aloud. Her proclamation troubled his sleep and triggered the flexion of his knees and elbows as he snuggled down tighter into the tub. She held her breath in a fearful daze, muscles tensed in preparation for flight, but still he didn’t wake. Minutes passed.  _Now or never._

Her bare feet hardly lifted as she padded closer.

 _Please be a good dog,_ she prayed.

Gingerly, as though waking an eldritch monster, Felix lifted the unflighted arrow shaft she had brought with her and poked him in the ribs.

He startled horribly, limbs flailing in disorientation, and she stopped just short of shrieking. Scrambling upright with a terrifying rumble building in his throat, the werewolf’s red eyes darted around wildly before settling on her form.

The adventurer’s spirit inside Felix commanded that she stand tall and assert her capability, but the absence of any armor painfully detracted from her attempt to create a daunting silhouette.

Then, to her horror he immediately homed in on her left arm. Felix swallowed noiselessly. Behind her back, gripped firmly in hand, was Wolfbane. She had brought it as an extra precaution on her original journey but was now regretting the decision to attempt concealment of it. She tried not to let her anxiety show, and imagined that too was a lost cause.

“Uh. Hello?"

The werewolf met her trapped stare.

“You,” he said in a stern tone, “are that human from last night, aren’t you?”

Before she could stop herself, Felix leaned back in surprise. “I… no,” she replied, struggling to collect herself. Brows coming down hard, she totaled his words up and came to a startling conclusion.

 _Oh. It’s you._ He looked very different, absent of dark and form-engulfing fur. _The one that gave me the once over_. She watched as he did it again, lids lowering to rake heated eyes down her body.

“Is that really necessary?" Felix asked, terse and ruffled by the rude behavior.

He blinked up at her and smiled. “You’re not very skilled with deception."

Felix fumbled for something to say in her defense but came up short. “I knew it as soon as I smelled you,” the werewolf declared in a quiet mutter. “Human, dead ringer.”

“Well I'm—” She mentally flipped through a few paltry excuses. Plucked the first half-decent one from the air at random. “I did just take a bath for the first time in almost two moons, so—”

“No, that's not what I’m talking about.” He sniffed, crossing his arms over the lip of the tub casually as he regarded her with that illicit red gaze. “Though you’ve cleaned up well.”

She flushed and quickly recalculated the chances of their stilted conversation becoming violent. Carefully, Felix withdrew her left hand from behind her, taking care to ensure he saw the movement clearly. Placing the werewolf-suppressing dagger on the floor, she rose and licked her lips before opening the same palm in an appealing motion. “Perhaps I could start over?” She offered him a hopeful smile. “My name is Felix.”

He could not have looked more disinterested.

“You assaulted me with that, not your little knife,” the werewolf accused seriously. He pointed at the arrow shaft in her other hand.

“Oh,” she said softly, glancing at the blunt stick.

“Yes, ‘oh.’ Mind putting that away too?” She watched him straighten as he hauled himself out of the bathtub with a wince, rolling his shoulders. Unpleasant cracks and pops issued from his spine and neck. He set his feet on the floor and tilted his head from side to side, regarding her questioningly.

Despite the rude banality in the werewolf's speech, every hair she had was lifting in anticipation of a fight. Felix tossed the stick away with a clatter. She was starting to feel incredibly warm, and her fingers free of defenses she found tugging at the neck of her shirt.

His trousers, she noticed, were worse off than she’d thought, ripped off at the knees. They clung tightly to each thigh. As he spread his legs slightly, Felix decided they left very little to the imagination.

She forced her gaze back up to his face in a way she hoped wasn’t obvious. “If you don’t mind me asking, how exactly did you cross the river?”

“I’m not blooded yet,” he said flatly, chin down.

That meant absolutely nothing to her. "Sorry?"

“I have sworn no allegiances to Zamorak.”

“You what?” Felix stared. “I didn’t realize that was even possible. You harbor no affinity towards him at _all_?”

Something moved in his pupils, between the black, lightless middle and piercing crescent of white. “Correct.”

She startled as the tub beneath his left hand cracked, just barely managing not to split into shards. The hairline stopped a neat distance away from the bottom.

 _This must be what prey animals feel like_ , Felix thought, a little desperate.

She forced herself to unclench her trembling hands. The werewolf was fully awake and likely sizing her up as an opponent, competitive nature practically a guarantee. Felix could hear something rushing in her ears.

 _What does blooding entail?_   It certainly didn’t sound good to her.

Maybe she would live to find out if she ditched her foolish idea to befriend him and ran to get help.

 _Worth a shot!_ her mind shouted.

“Well, this has been fabulous,” Felix said, voice betraying her urgency, “but perhaps I’ll be going.” She put one foot behind her to test her luck. “Honestly, please accept my apologies for rousing you,” another foot joined the other, “and I promise, if you leave the occupants of this temple alone,” she was nearly to the door leading back to the cloisters, "I won’t tell anyone you were ever here.”

The werewolf looked skeptically at her shifting legs and raised an amused eyebrow.

“Whatever for?” He rocked to his feet languidly. The creature’s hand tapped lightly as he ran a hand over the fissure in the dull, white stone of the bathtub. “I thought we were getting all… reacquainted.”

Felix laughed, panicked and wry, and tried to breathe. The thought of Ivan having to bury her outside flashed through her mind.

“Well, races aside,” she struggled to explain, gesturing with a shaky finger between them as she spoke, “it’s just a little bit scandalous for two half-dressed people of recent association to chat in the bath, isn’t it?”

“Wholly objective,” he countered warmly. As he spoke he circled her, toeing Wolfbane away by the handle. “I think it’s _entirely_ appropriate.”

_Gods, what the fuck do you want?_

The fearful vigor pumping through her limbs began to slowly drain away, ebbing tension and strength both from her body. In its place, the dawning realization that the werewolf, by phases attractive and terrifying, was playing with her. Provoking her for fun.

“Alright,” Felix breathed as she turned to keep him in her line of sight. "Awkward question. Are you… not going to eat me? Pardon me for asking, but I don’t do chats with werewolves often, if that’s what we’re doing.” Her tone fluctuated from light to strained as she watched him edge nearer.

“You don’t know very much about real werewolves for someone relying entirely on a flimsy illusion,” he mocked cuttingly, mouth upturned in a predatory grin. She wondered at the way his gravelly voice rolled over her, searching for something, goading her.

“Fair enough,” she whispered after a time.

When he stopped he hardly had to look down to meet her stare.

 _I let him get too close_ , she thought numbly. _He smells heavenly._

“No, Felix,” the werewolf promised darkly, “I won’t eat you.” Her relief was short-lived. “But I _am_ willing to teach you about real werewolves, if you’d like,” he suggested, tone scraping against a register low enough to make her toes curl.

 _Real werewolves,_ she mused, drowsing in an aura of delicious possibilities. “How generous of you,” Felix sighed.

She shifted closer.

He moved in kind and blinded her temporarily. Felix blinked away sunspots. The red, sacred heart depicted in the window suffused him in a burning halo, dyeing the hair that curled around his face a rich burgundy. “I think it could be very worth the time and effort,” he lectured, lips brushing past hers. Teeth agleam the werewolf turned his nose into her cheek and exhaled a hot stream of air.

“Okay,” Felix whispered in his ear, shivering but not about to knuckle under entirely. “What's the weird sniffing mean?”

“If I were about to kill you it would mean, ‘I’m whetting my appetite’,” he bit out lowly. “In this case, the only other possible interpretation is that I would love to take you on the floor.”

He kissed her, claws grazing her neck as Felix threaded her arms around his waist. “Illuminating,” she whispered, chest tightening with each insistent touch of his lips, and pushed kneading hands into what she could reach. Felix's fingers dug in firm circles where she imagined it might feel the crankiest from napping like a bread twist. She froze when he inhaled sharply.

He made a disappointed noise. “No, that’s not bad,” he hissed, burying his face in her hair and clutching her closer. Ten small points of moderate discomfort pricked her through the material of her shirt and without permission Felix felt her body leaning in to the strange sensation, jerking against it when he eagerly repositioned his hands to cradle her ass and pull them flush.

Head awhirl with thoughts, Felix continued to rub deep circles into his back, contemplating the drawbacks of vocalizing her desire to find somewhere cozier to do this than a hard temple floor.

“Keep that up and see what happens,” he growled.

Whether it had been meant with finality or not, ever-curious, she did, and suddenly Felix was ripped from the ground, lifted into the air with no discernible effort. Not a light person by her own measure, she swallowed a yelp and clung tighter.

The werewolf took three long strides to the windowsill and set her upon it roughly, leveling their hips by pulling her to it's edge. She wiggled against him and he quieted her squirming with hands and those rubescent, glowing eyes, rolling shut and flicking open again. "Don't."

Felix experienced a dizzying moment of lucidity as she realized how precarious her position was, back a push away from tumbling through old, stained glass.

“Is this wise?” Alarm tickled the roof of her mouth and she braced herself against either side of the window with white knuckled fingers. “Someone could see us!”

The werewolf’s hands bit into her waist in response. He looked down at where their bodies were touching, and a low moan of agreement passed his lips.

Felix felt something inhibitive inside her unlatch.

“By all means,” he whispered, arms completely caging her in. “I’m not keeping you.”

The realization that she wasn't actually certain whether he intended to do so or not passed unremarkably.

But it did occurr to Felix, at one point, as she drove her mouth against a werewolf's in the harshest kiss she’d ever shared, that maybe she was enjoying herself a little too much.

They were pressed together firmly enough that he had to instruct her to take off her trousers twice, voice barely resembling anything civil as he shoved his own ragged clothing aside and rolled down her shredded shirt to lave her neck.

“Last chance,” he breathed. Felix nodded in tremulous confirmation and he took her like a prize, huffing in short bursts when she pressed her feet into the wall to meet each thrust.

Truthfully, Drezel and Ivan were none the wiser to the shenanigans taking place in Saradomin’s prized temple, not even as the sounds of their pleasure reverberated through its uppermost rafters.

There was no audience to judge them, and they thought nothing of the way they held each other.

Felix sucked his lower lip into her mouth, laugh a filthy mockery of his responding groan. Shameless and frenzied, he choked on his satisfaction until it rose into a sound too sinful to call loving.

Forehead to forehead, pressed to the glass, they rocked themselves into a microcosm that splintered into oblivion. No one saw Felix struggle to restrain her cries of encouragement, or when she failed. No one heard the werewolf raggedly breathing her name over and over as he haltingly brought them to completion, or when she gasped her exuberant replies against his trembling throat.

“You’ve hurt me,” Felix sighed blissfully, fingertips tracing scratches on his shoulder blades, a map of where he had found and broken her of decency.

“Likewise,” the werewolf said gently, and licked a stripe of her blood off his claws.

They stayed that way a while, a hazy outline in a high window aflame with the glow from an afternoon sun.

If any gods had seen them there, not a one ever voiced it.

Maybe they should have.

 

* * *

 

Felix toed off her boots and padded into the room she’d specifically modeled to her comforts. She had already lit the fire that would heat her water, and as she slid into the tub she thought about days passed and frowned.

It had dawned on her before that it was a little fishy, but now she was certain all that werewolf stuff was probably nonsense. She chuckled joylessly, replaying the illicit day in her mind. _If I know him at all, he was talking right off the dome. All lies_.

The World Guardian liked to think that despite her new, lofty title, she was a little less self-sacrificing than she used to be. The drinking was one thing— but giving herself freely to anyone that asked was a habit so much harder to break. She sunk until she was almost fully submerged, nose peeping above the water.

 _What an ass_ , she grumbled.

 

* * *

 

Her garden appeared to be a place of contemplation; green and full of sprouting things easily crushed underfoot. Vaster than he expected it to be, forming the border of her property in natural, high walls of prickly pines and shedding firs.

Cast in every direction were small, finely toothed tools. A spade leaned against the pulsating portal. Waxy wedges of thick paper protruded from the ground, and he stooped to read some of them.

_Arbutus unedo,_

_Quercus,_

_Polystichum munitum._

He strolled through the doors of her foyer. He examined the carefully ordered runes inlaid in the molding of the staircase and turned in small circles to admire paintings of familiar landscapes. He passed a room with little more than trinkets and stuffed creatures.

In her study, he carefully palmed a handful of pink stones from a bookshelf, shaking them to admire their sparkle. He spied an ornately carved telescope and peered into the sky. He drew lines from his memory on nautical maps hung from the walls by tiny, bent nails and lain carelessly over dusty furniture.

He poked around her larder, and found various, strong-smelling oils, oats finely ground into flour, and a box full of leaves rolled into firm, tiny pearls. When he intently laid one on his tongue, it tasted sharp and bitter. He spat it surreptitiously into the sink.

Truthfully, from his perspective, it was of the utmost importance to catalog everything he could about her house before Felix emerged from her soak.

 _Who knows when I'll get this opportunity again,_ he thought snidely.  _Fair is fair, you little sleuth._

His ears alerted him to the sound of damp feet over carpet on the level above. Put on his most indecent smile and entered her bedroom, clearing his throat dramatically.

"Hello, darling," Sliske crooned, robes whispering as they caught against the woven rug. "Did you miss me?"

Felix’s head whipped around, and she glowered, raising a hand to cover herself as her head tilted in irritation. She was standing in front of a full-length mirror, naked but for the hair curling wetly at her nape.

He realized she must have been trying to get a glimpse of something in its polished reflection. She shifted angrily to one foot, and he saw.

Scar tissue. Old, in the relative sense, dull and white jnstead of shiny red. Four neat little dots in a tight crescent shape, twins in fact. They sloped over either side of her hips. Part of a pattern. One he recognized.

“Really?” Sliske drawled, staring at the scars hungrily. “How sentimental.”

When he looked back at her face, Felix was biting her lip in a way that he generally found appealing but more likely than a red-letter afternoon indicated imminent, shrill yelling.

He lowered his voice humbly as he approached her, mouth parting into a teasing grin. “Please spare me your false modesty. Would you like more, World Guardian?” He reached for her, the Zarosian symbol on his wrist brushing against her arm as she pulled away slightly. “I do so love to reminisce.”

“I figured this would go without saying,” Felix said tightly, “but please don’t break into my fucking house.”

Sliske rolled his eyes, crossing both arms in disappointment, and she faced him long enough for him to get a large eyeful. Expression grim, Felix raised her hand pointedly. She pressed her thumb and middle finger together.

He scowled. “That isn’t going to work—”

And punched him in the face.

“— _on me_! _Ow_! My eye! Always the eye!”

Clutching his face, he moved to regain his footing and sloshed ineffectually instead.

_…Why am I standing in a lake._

The Karamjan jungle greeted him.

Sliske shook his head, very slowly, to clear the effects of punching, and the teleportation spell.

Regarding his new, humid surroundings with distaste, he wondered how much time it would really take him, through brute force alone, to circumvent the dimensional eviction. _Hardly a moment_ , he mused bitterly.

Then Sliske contemplated what would need doing if Felix was truly that cross.

She might not be as keen to follow along with his desires anymore. Then again, most of the time Felix was actively working to stop his plans from coming to fruition. 

“Oh, whatever,” Sliske relented, redundantly, as he'd already lost the round. Shadow gathered to shape his will. “You’ll be seeing me again soon.”

If anyone heard his promise, no one bothered to inform her.

Again… maybe they should have.


End file.
